Defending Israel (and academic freedom!)

Look what we have here. We have New York legislators poised to eliminate state aid to universities that harbor a minor academic group on account of that group’s resolving to boycott Israeli universities. The group is the American Studies Association, previously unheralded, consisting of some 4,000 to 5,000 academics who specialize in, of course, American studies. Its politics are made clear in a statement it issued with regard to the boycott that it “stands in solidarity with aggrieved peoples in the United States and in the world,” and in another that it issued at the time of the Occupy Wall Street movement: “We are workers. We are the 99 percent.” In short, a left-wing association nostalgic for Marxist cant, whose refusal to traffic with universities in Israel, with which it has no connections anyway, would probably not have been noticed by Israel or anyone else had it not been for the furious reaction of Israel’s devotees in this country, who tolerate no lapses in devotion to the Jewish state. So far, the purely symbolic boycott, besides igniting the fires of some New York legislators, has been denounced by at least 80 colleges and universities, not to mention the American Association of University Professors, the American Council on Education and the Association of American Universities, plus Israel-devoted pundits in the pages of the press. Imagine.

One luminary of the academic world, the president of Bard College, did inject a note of pragmatism as he joined the general denunciation, commenting, “As an active member of the Jewish community, I recognize that the American Jewish community is disproportionately generous to American higher education. For the president of an institution to express his or her solidarity with Israel is welcomed by a very important part of their support base,” if you get what he means. But apart from that, it was all high-minded indignation based on respect for – get this — academic freedom!

Yes. And not just college presidents but New York politicians too have been absolutely in a lather about academic freedom as they conspire to penalize universities for tolerating it. They insist on that point.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, putting forward a bill to cut off aid to schools that tolerate members of the offending association, declared, “The discriminatory boycott of Israel and its academic institutions are a blatant assault on the academic freedoms that New York and its students have come to hold dear.”

Sen. Jeffrey Klein and Assemblyman Dov Hikind, sponsors of another, similar bill, said in a joint statement, “The ASA’s boycott is targeted discrimination against Israel that betrays the values of academic freedom that we hold dear.” (More “hold dear.”)

I’ve found it’s essential. Whenever an effort is made to stifle dissent regarding Israel, it is always cast as a defense of freedom – of speech, of the press, or as in this case, of the academy — rather than as the opposite, which an innocent layman might take it to be.

Assembly Hikind’s devotion to academic freedom was perhaps best demonstrated a couple of years ago when he prevailed on Brooklyn College to drop a course on Middle East politics taught by a young doctoral student, Kristofer Petersen-Overten, that he perceived as too sympathetic to the Palestinians. He represents a district in Brooklyn that is heavily Orthodox Jewish and is himself the son of “a devout follower of the Vizhnitz Hasidic dynasty,” a Ukranian lineage, per Wikipedia, distinguished by its followers wearing a bow on the right side of the traditional black hat rather than the left, though the assemblyman himself opts for a skull cap. The New York Times once described him as “the king of the Orthodox Jewish community in New York.”

Assemblyman Dov Hikind

He launched his career back in 1970 as an acolyte of the notorious Meir Kahane, in whose Jewish Defense League (labeled by the FBI as a a “right-wing terrorist group”) he became an “important leader,” in the words of The New York Times. That is the same Jewish Defense League that distinguished itself by bombing Soviet targets in this country at a time when Jews were struggling to get out of the Soviet Union. And it was the same Meir Kahane whose anti-Arab and anti-liberal-Jewish ravings were so over-the-top that he was ultimately barred from serving again in the Israeli parliament, to which he had been elected.

Nor has Hikind’s religious-nationalist fervor abated over the years. Lately he has been involved in an effort to Judaize Arab East Jerusalem, which Israel conquered in 1967, and a couple of years ago showed up there leading a group of 50 American Jews, promising to buy an apartment in a new building complex. His wife is the executive vice president of an organization, American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, whose goal is to implant Jews in Arab areas of Jerusalem so as to “reclaim” them. Its website not only praises “the pioneering spirit of our ideologically motivated families,” but also asserts, “Jerusalem belongs to every single Jew, wherever he or she may live,” (meaning, the hell with Christians and Muslims), in case you ever wondered what Palestinian distress is about.

Hikind has been a member of the New York State Assembly since 1983, during which time he has issued 94,568 press releases in support of Israel and its dispossession of Arabs, though that number is only an estimate and some experts claim it is higher.

Sen. Jeffrey Klein

It may be indelicate to mention it, but Sheldon Silver of Manhattan and Jeffrey Klein of the Bronx are also of the tribe of Abraham, as are the more prominent commentators who have weighed in with their own cargos of indignation. Silver has been the author, sponsor and defender of the state’s laws enforcing Kosher food designations. Klein is a member of the New York regional board of the Anti-Defamation League.

On the pundit side, Charles Krauthammer, syndicated columnist based at the Washington Post, in the course of railing against the boycott of Israel as “anti-Semitic,” which is standard rhetoric, and characterizing Israel as “profoundly democratic,” defiantly identified himself and his wife as founders of a group “dedicated to reviving lost and forgotten Jewish classical music,” as if daring the anti-Semites to come and get him. Such courage!

The profound democracy he so admires alas includes Israel’s ruling 2.5 million Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank who are kept stateless in their own land and are deprived even of the right to be informed of the charges against them if they are arrested, which they may be at any time, on the whim of any teenage Jewish soldier from Tel Aviv, Kiev, or Hoboken.

Jeff Goldberg, staff writer at The Atlantic, who in the pages of the New York Post denounced the boycott as “an abomination to those who believe in intellectual freedom,” is, of course, for those who follow these things, a veteran not of the American but the Israeli military, which he dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania to join and where he served as a prison guard, overseeing captured Palestinians during the first Intifada.

You don’t usually see such identifiers in news stories. You just read that so-and-so is indignant over some group slighting Israel, and you might suppose that so-and-so is an objective observer.

Another thing you don’t read much about, in case you’re concerned with the corruption of academia, is the availability and popularity of all-expenses-paid academic junkets to Israel, laid on by such organizations as Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Schusteman Foundation, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, all of which are happy to put American professors up in five-star hotels and dine them at the best restaurants as they show them around the world’s most hypocritical state (my designation). Nothing said on that score. Nothing said either about all-expenses-paid “Birthright” trips for Jewish-American youngsters, underwritten jointly by Sheldon Adelson and Israel’s Jewish Agency. Nothing said about Jewish-American kids, like the younger Jeff Goldberg, being encouraged to join the Israeli military and lord it over dispossessed Palestinian villagers. But, by god, let some insignificant little academic group declare a meaningless boycott, and watch the fur fly! Watch the denunciations erupt from the offices of college presidents! Watch the bills fire up in the New York State Legislature! It makes you want to hold your head in your hands.

Carl Strock

20 Responses

How does 2% of a population carry so much weight in our country. I am a minority, I assimilated when I came to America, I never once forced my minority on a country 98% more than I. Many jews roam the world, command the stage & then wonder why people throw lemons at them! There are Jews who are friends of mine & they are my friends because they are good people. The others who steal land & homes, kill people are terrorists. And the US supports this with 3 billion dollars a year. That’s 8.5 million dollars a day. Don’t you think the American people could use this money for our country?

As a country we should never condone bigotry to anyone. But listen to the those that say things about Arabs, do they lose their jobs, do they get censored, are they forced to leave a life time career because they spoke the truth about how Israel is treating the Palestinians.

You may tout you are the chosen one, but you are not. There is nothing Christ like about your behavior. Let’s not forgot you killed Christ…a jew just like you because he wanted you to stop coveting your neighbors goods, witnessing a false god and murdering others. I know there are jews out there that are Christlike. You all should come together to save your faith. It is threatened by your own people. They and only they tarnish you, no one else can unless you give them reason to.

Do you really want to give your children a birthright that consists of stealing homes & land, killing innocent lives, coveting they neighbors good. If I were a jew I would be embarrassed to be associated with that government and anyone that supports it. I would denounce their behavior. I would stop funding them. I would not raise my child under their cloak of lies.

Wow Jet, so some of your best friends are Jews, right? Replace “Jews” with “Black” and one can see where that comment comes from.

I oppose much of Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians, but trotting out the old “You killed Christ” line is blatant anti-Semitism. First of all, neither you nor anyone else can prove the validity of Jesus of Nazareth was a Messiah, let alone had any divine origins. So, whether his death was just or not is a pointless discussion. To be perfectly honest, let’s face it, Jesus led a movement filled with people opposed to the ROMAN occupation, there was only going to be one end to what he was doing.

Well Carl, I guess it doesn’t take much for the racists to come out. Jet’s post is one of the most egregious examples of anti-Semitism based on religious ignorance. At least thank you for posting it to remind us that the bigots are everywhere.

The conservative reaction to the American Studies Association is based less on the actual issue and has more to do with conservative paranoia at their ever shrinking power base. They will claw at whatever last shreds they have, and would rather burn the whole hosue down than admit they are wrong on any point.

Jesus (aka “Christ”) was killed by an ad-hoc alliance of Jews, Romans, and numerous others. To put all the blame on the Jews is stupid.

As is, in my opinion, any attempt to make the killing of Jesus anything unusual. Lots of prophets and teachers were killed: Socrates, Servetus, Cranmer…I could go on & on. One’s no better than another.

It pains me to write this, but Carl, you’re beginning to sound like a One-Trick Pony. We all understand the bitterness you hold against those you believe forced you into retirement. Of course, I continue to believe that the real cause was an overall cheapening of the Gazette not-at-all-coincidentally coming on the heels of the passing of its control to a new & apparently greedier generation. To me it’s a travesty to read Sara Foss’ work where your columns used to appear. Without doubt she is a kind soul & a skilled writer. But she seems to me to be so consumed with seeing her words in print that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she writes copy while riding her bicycle, eating her meals or even in a restroom. And the result, at least to me, is the substituting of quantity for the intellectual edge that you always had & still have.

At any rate, why not continue using the same trick but trying it on a different pony for a while. How about the treatment of the Roma in Eastern Europe & Western Asia? Or how about the treatment of the Rakhine in Myanmar? Or how about the treatment of the Melungeons in Appalachia? Or even closer to home, how about the treatment of the Allentown families in the Town of Day, Saratoga County?

Hopefully you’ll read this comment as constructive criticism. Please don’t stop what you’re doing, I would just like you to broaden your vision.

Now there’s a slick one. Complain about Israeli exceptionalism with one side of your mouth, then use it as a rationale to single them out, among all the nations of the world, for a boycott of thought. THOUGHT. Whatever valid criticism of the policies of that nation’s government there may be is drowned out in a knee-jerk hateful exclusion. The reality is that the ASA will be poorer for the lack of prominent intellectuals and scientists…good luck finding them among the nations where people cheered, danced in the streets, fired their weapons skyward and praised Allah when the towers fell in Lower Manhattan and 3,000 innocent civilians died on September 11, 2001. But let’s punish the country that declared a national day of mourning and sent assistance. Makes perfect sense.

As for you, Carl, stop whining. You’re blaming the wrong people for losing your job at the Gazette. Kindly ruminate on this link to the statement from Scholars for Peace in the Middle East:

I am a semite, I am not anti ME!…to silence anyone is to silence all. There is no democracy when it comes to any criticism of Israel. In this day and age we know better and we should hold all accountable for the horrible treatment of any people. But you obviously don’t think Arabs count as people. If the Jewish religion and the Jewish State Israel is as democratic as it proclaims than 20% of it’s population could vote, get educated, work freely, visit their families freely, travel within their Country Palestine. Educate yourself! The truth is before you if you just need to open your eyes.

While we’re playing favorites, why don’t all the Catholics in the legislature lobby to revoke state funding from any theology or philosophy program that exposes the abuses and hipocracy of the church? Why don’t hispanic legislators try to revoke funding for programs that discuss anything critical about Latin America, from the Castro regime to Pinochet or Noriega? Lastly, I highly suggest that all white legislators band together and ban funding for programs that teach about slavery, Jim Crow or the racial inequality that persists even in our own state. That’s the ticket.

Carl Strock should be in the Times-Union print section, not buried in the blogosphere where only cyber sleuths can find him. When that day comes I will be a subscriber to the print version. Newspapers all over are in decline, as everyone knows. A significant part of the cause of the decline is shear boredom. A free press is alleged to foster democracy, informing the public about sensitive and vital issues that many concern them. A free press that is somnolent, such as both the Times-Union and the Gazette, promotes only lethargy and boredom.

But I do wish, Carl, that you’d post more often. Take it from me: if you think of something to say (almost ANYTHING), a lot of us will consider it worth reading.

For example, did you know that the distinguished publication Chemical and Engineering News recently had a thing about the food preferences of black bears, said preferences being called “palettes” instead of “palates”?

I continue to disagree (respectfully) over the cause of his being asked to retire from the Gazette. My opinion is that the change in leadership at the Gazette has resulted in many, many cost-cutting moves in addition to Carl’s leaving. It is my guess that Carl’s being a senior (and very popular) columnist meant that they considered asking him to retire meant significant savings because they have not replaced him. In addition, the Fulton-Montgomery-Schoharie edition which once had five senior reporters now has two on some days and one or even none on many other days.

In response to this continuing diminution of quality, I have recently terminated my subscription of more than 25 years and frankly I don’t miss what it has become one bit. Thank heaven the T-U has provided this space to Carl even on a non-paid basis.

Thanks for your concern, but just as a point of fact, or a few points of fact, I was not asked to retire, that was my choice based on changed conditions, and there had not yet been a change of leadership at the time.
Yes, maybe I should make more aggressive use of this blog.